To effectively manage today's evolving data requirements, developers and database administrators need user-friendly tools to speed and simplify development and data management activities. The latest version of Oracle's integrated development environment, Oracle SQL Developer 4.0, streamlines database adoption to Oracle Database 12c and helps increase productivity for a broad list of database development tasks so organizations can fully capitalize on the power of enterprise data.

Oracle announced the release of Oracle SQL Developer 4.0, enhanced with new functionality to simplify the development and management of Oracle Database environments.

The latest generation of the world's #1 database, Oracle Database 12c is designed for the cloud with an innovative, multitenant architecture.

By leveraging the migration tooling included in Oracle SQL Developer 4.0, customers can realize a significant decrease in the cost of migrating legacy systems and applications as less custom coding and database development is required.

Oracle product management asks, "Are you interested in learning how Oracle customers are taking advantage of Oracle's Data Warehousing and Big Data Platform? Want to keep up on the latest product releases and how they might impact your organization? Looking for best practices that describe how to most effectively apply Oracle DW-Big Data technology?

The new release focuses on Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), Database as a Service (DBaaS), and Data Warehousing and is also designed to help enterprises simplify their biggest database challenges. It includes performance increases between 50 and 100 percent and storage capacity increases between 33 and 100 percent.

Quality of service in complex and varying Database as a Service deployments or database consolidation deployments is ensured end-to-end from database servers, through network adapters and network switches, to storage. Oracle Exadata Database Machine X4 is the foundation for modern database cloud environments.

Monica Kumar writes, "IT customers are looking to reap the benefits of cloud computing, including at the Infrastructure layer. Their role is viewed as data center service providers. To them, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), is internalized as Integration of 'astonishing' applications and systems...

For an insightful perspective of IaaS from Oracle, join VP of Product Management for Oracle Enterprise Manager, Sudip Datta, in his chalk talk..."

"WD is sampling SMR - Shingled Magnetic Recording - disk drives to several
cloud vendors including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Seagate
announced sales of a million SMR drives in September. HGST likely has
a similar program under way.

Disk drive tracks are separated by a gap. In SMR drives, this gap is
removed to roughly double density, says a paper from CMU's Parallel
Data Lab..."

"Last month I dug into drive failure rates based on the 25,000+ consumer drives we have and found that consumer drives actually performed quite well. Over 100,000 people read that blog post and one of the most common questions asked was: "OK, so the consumer drives don't fail that often. But aren't enterprise drives so much more reliable that they would be worth the extra cost?"

"Next time you're meeting with your storage vendor sales rep, try bringing up the topic of archiving. You'll likely see an immediate reaction. The sales rep should be delighted that you recognize the need for archiving (so you do not need to be 'educated') and that you are open to discussing a prefabricated 'solution.' Unfortunately, while it may be tempting to envision a department store aisle filled with pre-integrated, ready-to-use archiving technologies from competing vendors, it's beyond unlikely..."

"On December 9, 1968, Dr. Douglas Engelbart addressed a packed theater at the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, demonstrating a new computing platform that heralded advancements from the computer mouse to videoconferencing. Forty-five years later, we're still reaping the benefits of his vision..."

"Forrester Research's riff on Leonardo da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man drawing, in 1490, of a naked male with ideal human proportions is downright clever. In Forrester's version, a male dressed in a business suit shows how a variety of wearable devices might became part of the modern man.

Forrester's "wearables man" proportions are based on a survey of 4,657 online U.S. adults. Twenty-nine percent were willing to strap on a wearable device to clothing. Lots of people already do this, from clipping on tiny iPods to sensors that monitor heart rate during exercise. Also, 28 percent were willing to wear a smartwatch, which is somewhat surprising given salty predictions of smartwatch holiday sales..."

"Once considered a curiosity, the digital currency bitcoin has held the mainstream media spotlight the past few weeks. Its price reached parity with that of gold at one point; then last weekend skittish speculators dumped huge quantities in response to negative news from China. Meanwhile, the financial world has been paying closer and closer attention. Don't be distracted by the Silk Road bust -- bitcoin is becoming a mainstream phenomenon..."

When prices fall, people put off buying things. And when people put
off buying things, companies put off investing. And then the economy
slumps - and keeps slumping. Even worse, people are stuck trying to pay
back debts that don't fall with wages that do. So bankruptcies pile up,
and so do bank losses. That makes people too scared to borrow, and banks
too scared to lend, which only makes prices fall even more..."

"Right now, everything about Bitcoin is news: Bitcoin millionaires. Bitcoin-funded drug kingpins. Bitcoin ATMs. This week the news focused on a San Francisco man who is opening a Bitcoin pawn shop, and another California man who launched a site advertising jobs that pay in Bitcoin.

But there are plenty of aspects of the Bitcoin saga that haven't yet received breathless headlines..."

"IF you've only recently tuned in to the seemingly endless conversation about bitcoin, you could be forgiven for thinking that the digital currency is little more than the latest Wall Street fetish or a juiced-up version of PayPal. After all, so many headlines in the last few weeks have focused on its market price and the cool stuff you can get with it:..."

"The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been in the news lately with a sudden
surge in value followed by a spectacular crash - not to mention the
unfortunate tale of $US4 million in bitcoin on a hard drive that was
accidentally dumped in a rubbish tip. Bitcoin was the first widely used
cryptocurrency, but few people know it is not the only one. So how do
the top five cryptocurrencies by capitalisation compare?..."

"A venture capitalist, a former regulator, a lawyer and a pair of
entrepreneurs - Bitcoin evangelists all - gathered on Tuesday in the
private dining room of an upscale Manhattan restaurant to discuss their
vision of a world in which the currency plays a role in mainstream
finance.

It may be a far-fetched notion - Bitcoin, despite the attention it has
received in recent months, is still largely a plaything for speculators
online, with stomach-turning price swings - but it is one that these
men have bet millions of dollars can be achieved..."

"Earlier this week, a Bitcoin user in Pennsylvania reportedly received a letter from his bank, Firstbank, asking him to stop sending money to Coinbase, a popular wallet for storing the virtual currency."

"We respectfully request that you no longer perform transactions with this company or other companies of this kind," the letter says. "If there should be a reoccurrence of this type of activity, we will regretfully be forced to close your account."

In addition, Oracle will also be working to achieve OpenStack compatibility with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Oracle Compute Cloud Service and Oracle Storage Cloud Service.

This integration is intended to enable customers to use OpenStack to manage Oracle technology-based clouds, taking full advantage of the stability, efficiency, performance, scalability and security of these Oracle products.

Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux provide industry-leading security, performance, scalability and observability for cloud-based deployments, allowing customers to run their most demanding enterprise applications in private or public clouds. Integration with OpenStack will allow customers to integrate Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM environments with other OpenStack platforms.

Chris Kawalek writes, "Our spotlight this week is one of my favorite videos (and one of my favorite features of Oracle Linux), Ksplice. If you're not familiar with Ksplice, it's really astounding - it allows you to update the Linux kernel while it is running and without needing to restart. It's just amazing technology, and it comes with your Oracle Linux support subscription.

In the video below, Oracle's Tim Hill described a few different scenarios of how Ksplice can be used (click the image to hop over to the Oracle Linux YouTube channel and play the video)."

"This week has been all about next year. First we wrote about the coming
increase in HIPAA audits, then highlighted some major cloud events to
consider attending in the next calendar year. In this post, we're going
back to the future by taking a look at 3 big trends in the cloud-based
file sharing space to watch out for in 2014..."

"The cloud has had a significant impact on the IT market over the past
few years. From its beginnings as a niche term that few people had even
heard of - much less understood - the rapid rise of the technology from
initial hype to mainstream acceptance has been extraordinary.

The interest in these tools means growth in this sector is far outpacing
the IT industry as a whole. Gartner estimates that by 2016, the bulk of
new IT spending will go into this area. Meanwhile, IDC has observed that
the technology is now 'business as usual' for Chief Information Officers
and line-of-business managers..."

"In theory, cloud computing offers a fairly straightforward model for consuming compute and storage resources. Customers request capacity, it is provided by a vendor and it is paid for. Customers should be able to spin up and down resources as they need to and only pay for what they use.

Unfortunately, cloud pricing models are complicated, which makes purchasing decisions for consumers difficult and comparing across providers a challenge as well, a new report from the 451 Research Group shows..."

"Building security into the application development process has always been a challenge. The reality of cloud computing, however, introduces new hurdles that need to be identified and overcome.

In a new paper, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode) joined forces to help developers navigate the sometimes troubled waters of application security. The report focuses on security considerations for platform-as-a-service (PaaS), though the authors say their advice is relevant to software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) as well..."

"Cloud adopters face serious risk in the next two years because of the strong possibility that their provider will be acquired or forced out of business, according to Gartner.

The research firm is predicting a major consolidation in cloud services and estimates that about 25% of the top 100 IT service providers in the infrastructure space won't be around by 2015. 'One in four vendors will be gone for whatever reason -- acquisition, bankruptcy,' said William Maurer, a Gartner analyst. Most of the time, the changes will come through acquisition..."

"As many as 80 per cent of IT and line of business decision makers admit to using non-authorized software-as-a-service apps in the workplace.

Among the top users of software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps not authorized by the IT department are tech pros themselves, according to a recent survey commissioned by security software company McAfee Inc..."

"Amazon, Inc. is a remarkable business. Not only has it transformed
the internet shopping experience for most of us but their hosting
business, AWS, has also thrown down the gauntlet to commercial IT shops
by showing how much can be done to dramatically lower the cost of IT
operations. Indeed, there's a parallel with adoption behavior during the
early phases of the virtualization market, as customers test out potential
benefits by migrating some non-critical workloads, such as test/dev,
that remain under IT's direct control, into the public cloud. In parallel,
the lessons of public cloud are being learned in earnest within corporate
IT, with the twin goal of driving down the delivery costs whilst at the
same time transforming a technology-driven culture into one of flexible,
agile, service delivery. Welcome to the private cloud!"

"CIOs need to get their house in order before they get a seat at the top table, a panel of finance executives said.

Speaking at the Maximising the Value of Information Technology briefing hosted by the Financial Times and following an enlightening presentation by Telefonica UK CFO Mark Evans on innovation and leveraging new technologies to drive their business forward, CFOs at Dixons and business events organiser UBM suggested the CIO was still overwhelmingly a technology-focused role.

Two recent surveys show distinctly different priorities for CIOs. One
survey, 'IDC 2014 Predictions: CIO Agenda - Embracing 3rd Platform
Leadership Challenges as IT Transitions from Technology and Service
Delivery,' takes a far-reaching look at how the roles of CIOs and
IT organizations will undergo dramatic reinvention in the next five
years. The second survey, '2014 State CIO Top 10,' from the US National
Association of State CIOs (NASCIO), focuses on frontline tactical
priorities for IT leaders in the year ahead..."

"Most CIOs spend their time on the problem of how employees can use technology more effectively. Have you ever thought about how they might use technology less?

According to Stanford researcher Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, using computers (and tablets, and smartphones, and...) less might be the key to greater productivity for your enterprise. According to Pang, the barrage of information we get every day (and, to be honest, every working minute in the case of most of us) makes us less effective, more distracted, and -- to follow the theme of this community -- less efficient..."

"Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) staffing is both your organization's greatest asset and greatest monetary investment, says John Rivard, research director for Infrastructure and Operations at Gartner.

It's on the shoulders of these folks that the future of your organization rests, and if you're not doing everything you can to recruit and retain the best of the best, you could be at a competitive disadvantage, he says..."

"The gap is widening between those organizations that know how to get the most business value of IT and those that don't view IT as a strategic imperative. The latest version of the annual High Performance IT survey of 202 CIOs conducted by Accenture finds that of the organizations that are high performers, when it comes to using IT to drive the business suggest, most of them are focusing their IT investments on improving customer interactions..."

"Fast-growing companies like Square and MongoDB are driving IT innovation with leaner staffs, cloud-first computing, self-service everything and CTOs rather than CIOs...

As a high-tech startup, MongoDB gave no real thought to IT as it was getting off the ground.
Laptops were purchased on an as-needed basis by individual employees and expensed alongside printer paper and working lunches. Free cloud applications like Google Apps and Dropbox were the go-to productivity tools, and engineers coding the NoSQL database were certainly tech-savvy enough to spin up servers and troubleshoot problems on their own..."

"Trends come and go in the technology industry but some things, such as IT system failures, bloom eternal.

"Nothing has changed," said analyst Michael Krigsman of consulting firm Asuret, an expert on why IT projects go off the rails. "Not a damn thing."

"These are hard problems," he added. "People mistakenly believe that IT failures are due to a technical problem or a software problem, and in fact it has its roots into the culture, how people work together, how they share knowledge, the politics of an organization. The worse the politics, the more likely the failure."

"The rise of software-defined networks (SDNs) is one of the big tech stories of 2013. For many IT organizations looking at deploying the technology, it's no longer a question of 'if,' but 'when,' according to Gartner's Joe Skorupa, research vice president for Data Center Convergence and Andrew Lerner, research director for Networking, at Gartner..."

"As the ever-ambitious wireless manufacturers rush to get their own iterations of devices supporting 802.11ac on the shelves, hype about how the average end user will benefit from this new wireless standard overshadows its real advantages.

Like 802.11n before it, there are so many impressive and exciting features defining 802.11ac that people are having difficulty grasping the reality of the standard and how it will improve user experience..."

"The rise of software-defined networks (SDNs) is one of the big tech stories of 2013. For many IT organizations looking at deploying the technology, it's no longer a question of 'if,' but 'when,' according to Gartner's Joe Skorupa, research vice president for Data Center Convergence and Andrew Lerner, research director for Networking, at Gartner.

"Remote connectivity to network resources has become a staple for many employees of modern enterprises. Whether the connection is conducted via VPN, remote desktop or Secure Shell (SSH), it will unavoidably traverse a network path laden with routers, switches and firewalls, many of which can be easily compromised.

Much to the dismay of administrators and organizations within the security industry, nefarious individuals are cognizant of these devices' vulnerabilities as well -- and any malicious person who has basic networking knowledge can successfully hack routers, switches and firewalls to steal corporate information and disrupt communications..."

"Service chaining is not a new concept, but the trend has taken on a new importance with the rise of SDN and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

A service chain simply consists of a set of network services, such as firewalls or application delivery controllers (ADCs) that are interconnected through the network to support an application. But SDN and NFV can make the service chain and application provisioning process a whole lot shorter and simpler..."

"American IT departments' decisions could inadvertently put organizations at risk of an information security breach if they don't have sufficient protocols for the disposal of old electronic devices.

Even those with established processes could unwittingly initiate a security leak if they rely on wiping or degaussing hard drives, or handing over their e-waste to an outsourced recycler. Worse yet, some organizations might be stockpiling old technology with no plan at all..."

"Growth is normally a boon for any business. Servers hum faster when an ecommerce site attracts more customers (and more credit card transactions). When storage requirements for a new business that handles documentation for large companies suddenly escalate, executives high-five each other.

Scaling can be so costly, though, that fast growth isn't always a positive. Fortunately, new technologies can help a company ramp up quickly and efficiently, removing some of the pain of having to expand a data center. Instead of being faced with a major capital outlay that offsets new revenue, these innovations make the impact of scaling up a data center to meet demand less of a drain..."

"Gartner said data center managers must modernize the capabilities of their facilities to handle both the emerging hardware technology and the escalation in energy consumption as a result of projected growth in server volume. In addition, Gartner said data center infrastructure management tools are critical to data center management..."

"Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) staffing is both your organization's greatest asset and greatest monetary investment, says John Rivard, research director for Infrastructure and Operations at Gartner.

It's on the shoulders of these folks that the future of your organization rests, and if you're not doing everything you can to recruit and retain the best of the best, you could be at a competitive disadvantage, he says.

"I believe there's going to be a battle over the future of your organization, and I&O is at the crossroads," Rivard said. "Your best employees have a greater, more positive impact on your organization than your best customers," he says...

"There is a DDoS debate in the cybersecurity industry about which solution
is more effective - multi-layer or single. However, the argument is really
more complex and must consider traditional defenses versus dedicated
DDoS defenses, multi-provider (device or service) versus single provider
(device or service), and layered defense in-depth versus single defender.

Traditional defenses, such as firewalls and IPS routers, are not as
effective as dedicated DDoS defense systems..."

"The National Security Agency created a best security practices list for
their customers, which was later expanded through a large-scale community
project initiated by the SANS Institute and sponsored by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The outcome of this project was the Top 20 Critical Security Controls
(20 CSC) - a prioritized list of security best practices that were proven
to help organizations combat the most common cybersecurity issues as
well as reduce the greatest number of exploitable cyberattack vectors..."

"A widely used security feature intended to protect access to online bank accounts is becoming increasingly ineffective, as cybercriminals develop advanced malicious software for Android devices, according to a report released Wednesday.

Many banks offer their customers two-factor authentication, which involves sending an SMS message with a code that's entered into a Web-based form. The code expires in a few minutes and is intended to thwart cybercriminals who have a person's login credentials.
But there are now multiple mobile malware suites that work in tandem with desktop malware to defeat one-time passcodes, wrote Ken Baylor, research vice president for NSS Labs..."

"Trend Micro released its annual security predictions report. The outlook cites that one major data breach will occur every month next year, and advanced mobile banking and targeted attacks will accelerate.

Critical infrastructure threats, as well as emerging security challenges from the Internet of Everything (IoE) and Deep Web, are also highlighted..."

"A company's logo serves many important functions. Over time, a well-designed logo creates familiarity, brand trust, loyalty, and can even become become an signifier of quality. Indeed, it's why Steve Jobs once paid famed designer Paul Rand $100,000 to design the NeXT logo.

What's really interesting is that a number of logos, both in the world of tech and out, contain hidden meanings and symbols that really take creativity to the next level. Here are some of the more interesting examples of hidden meanings within corporate logos. The majority of them are tech-related, but I've tossed in a few non-tech examples simply because they're too impressive to overlook..."

"If the tech sector is feeling optimistic about the future, that's good news for CIOs. After all, when vendors ramp up capital and product investment and boost staffing levels, it's fueled by an overall increase in demand for tech. It also translates to better products and services which CIOs will be able to acquire on the market. Fortunately, a recent survey from Technology Councils of North America (TECNA) and CompTIA, the non-profit association for the industry, indicates that positive sentiment is on the rise. However, serious concerns linger about a lack of tech talent, as well as perceived shortcomings in the quality of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) educational programs..."

That's not exactly how the saying goes, but it is the phrase that should be engraved over every door leading to IT. It's certainly better than Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Not a lot has changed since our early days, when IT was EDP and programmers were the high priests of the glass house. Except for everything.

Luckily, much of the fundamental wisdom of the early days of IT still applies, just in a different, modernized guise. Here are 10 old-school principles that will guide you through next-generation IT, and the fundamental differences in the ways you should apply them..."

It's never just about how good the technology is

Good information security starts with good physical security

Know the threats

Testing software means more than just putting code into production and seeing what happens

Control changes to the production environment

Waterfall ought to work, but agile actually does

Relationships precede process, and relationships outlive transactions

Integrate, because interconnecting 'islands of automation' takes a lot of stupid out of business processes

"Got a smartphone? Then you've got a camera -- and you're probably busily recording your friends, family, colleagues and life. But for many people, a quick snapshot or video with a camera phone is only the beginning.

While smartphone cameras are getting better all the time, regular digital cameras and camera accessories are getting more innovative as well. They are pushing the envelope as to what cameras can do -- and what both amateur and professional photographers can do with them.

In the following slides, we highlight some digital cameras -- as well as accessories for cameras and/or smartphones -- that are expanding our capabilities for interesting and innovative photography..."

"The holiday music is piping through the office and lights are twinkling
throughout. It's that time of the year when we like to put together
a list of our favorite gifts, not unlike Oprah! We queried the office
again this year to see what everyone was hoping to receive or excited
to give to friends, family and anyone else that made the 'Nice' list
this holiday season.

The theme was tech gadgets. The feedback included some usual suspects,
lots of active-lifestyle gadgets and also a few surprises. Here are our
Inbound Marketing team's top picks:.."

"With 2013 coming to an end, we took our annual look back at quotes from news stories over the last 12 months. Here are a handful that stuck with us through the year:

What she said

"The concept of national security does not mean that 'anything goes': States do not enjoy an unlimited right of secret surveillance."

-- E.U. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, speaking after a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in which they discussed revelations of widespread data gathering by the U.S. National Security Agency..."

"Yesterday marked the 107th anniversary of the birth of Grace Hopper. Hopper, you probably know, was a pioneer in the world of computers and computer programming. Her many accomplishments included programming one of the first computers, writing the first compiler, developing the pre-cursor to COBOL and doing this all, oh, by the way, while working her way up the ranks of the US Navy where she eventually became a rear admiral.

To celebrate her birthday, Google created a doodle in her honor and millions of kids and adults are taking part in the Hour of Code as part of Computer Science Education Week this week..."

You can't please everybody. But that's no reason to throw hands in the air and adopt a 'they'll take what we give them' approach to content and social strategy.

As customer centricity grows as a guiding mantra, brands should
internalize that social followers are not obligated to us in any way. They
do us a favor just connecting. So if your strategy is 'let's see how
much neglect and inconsideration they'll take before they leave us,'
you'll find the answer is ... not much. Some things we're doing to chase
them away:"

"Many virtualization vendors today would tell you there are very few workloads that you cannot virtualize. Large, resource-hungry workloads are no longer off limits when you can have a virtual machine with 64 virtual CPUs and 1 terabyte of memory along with direct access to the storage area network. However, just because you can virtualize something doesn't mean you should..."

"Among the many expectations for IT in 2014, Ethernet is projected to broaden its penetration in the metro area and the WAN. The ubiquitous technology will become further entrenched as a broadband access, cloud interconnect and wide area medium, further distancing itself from legacy TDM services. Here are eight predictions for Ethernet in the New Year, from service provider Comcast Business Services:"

10 Mbps Ethernet is the new T-1

It's the beginning of the end for TDM as the primary access technology

The distinction between Ethernet LAN and WAN blurs

Metro Ethernet will be redefined - taking the 'metro' out of Metro Ethernet

Private cloud dedicated interconnect really starts to matter

A breakthrough year for carrier Ethernet interconnection - through CE 2.0

"Cryptography was under heavy analysis long before Edward Snowden released the NSA's work undermining encryption. At the ekoparty Security Conference in 2012, Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo discussed an attack named CRIME that did not significantly affect the security of Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS). At Black Hat 2013, Yoel Gluck, Neal Harris and Angelo Prado, who continued researching SSL/TLS cryptography, revealed a new threat, the Browser Reconnaissance & Exfiltration via Adaptive Compression of Hypertext -- otherwise known as the BREACH attack -- which could have a far more profound impact on SSL/TLS than CRIME did..."

Oracle Storage is pleased to announce the following changes to the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance family:

Availability of ZFS Storage OS8 Minor 1 (2013.1.1). This software version provides additional performance enhancements that made possible our world record SPC-2 performance, as well as the SPECsfs response time of 700us.

Support for the 16Gb FC HBA ATO part number. Customers now have the option to purchase the 16Gb FC HBA at the time they purchase their ZFS Storage ZS3 system. The HBA will arrive tested and installed in their system.

"Predictive modeling needs the dynamic experimentation of big data to discern true, underlying correlations. Some organizations are ready for that disruption -- and some aren't..

The universe is an immensely tangled knot of correlations. Science is humanity's tool for identifying which correlations reveal the deep, dark, dense knots of causation at the heart of it all.

Scientific models -- also known as laws, theories, and hypotheses -- are highly simplified tools for untangling threads from the correlation knot and testing their causal plausibility. Data science is the art of using statistical models to identify and validate the correlative factors at work..."

"Companies have been told they should beg, borrow and steal an enterprise data strategy from outside their industries to jumpstart their own.

At the 2013 MIT Sloan CFO Summit there were plenty of data strategies to ogle -- from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to LinkedIn Corp. to the big daddy of big data, Google Inc. But economist and summit panelist Alberto Cavallo took a different tack..."

"A picture is worth a thousand words, but when it comes to data analytics, basic graphics or charts are not enough. Instead, users need the data to answer more complex questions and solve problems.

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice is using a tool called Tableau to present a clearer picture of children in the justice system and the effectiveness of the state's innovative reform efforts. Tableau is a self-service business intelligence tool that helps people of any skill level create data visualizations, reports or dashboards from databases, spreadsheets and big data sources, according to Francois Ajenstat, director of product management for Tableau Software.

Sometimes a mix of data and geospatial analytics can help bring data to life..."

"I've spent the last year or so doing research on the burgeoning field of big data security analytics. Based upon the time I've spent on this topic, I'm convinced that CISOs are looking for immediate help with incident detection, so they will likely focus on real-time big data analytics investments in 2014.

What do I mean by real-time big data security analytics? Think stream processing of data packets, network flows, and Meta data looking for anomalous/suspicious network activities that provide strong indication of a security incident in progress..."

"If you're an Android user -- or want to be -- you've likely heard about all the security risks of Google's mobile operating system. But how real are these threats, and how much damage can they do? Despite the fears, are Android devices actually a safe bet for an enterprise mobility strategy?

These are key questions for any organization thinking about a broad Android rollout or even simple acceptance of Android devices in a BYOD context. The answers may not be what you expect..."

"Do you sometimes get the feeling that your smartphone owns you instead
of the other way around? It's astonishing how that tiny screen commands
an almost hypnotic effect upon society as a whole. And a recent survey
report from LG Electronics reveals the extent to which Americans will
go to keep pecking away at their device - frequently pulling out the
smartphone in places and during events that would have been taboo in
the recent past. The trend is only expected to grow as the user base
increases from a current 170 Americans today to 193 million by 2016,
according to industry research..."

"Businesses are finally waking up to the fact that tablets and smartphones are good for the bottom line...

Go to any of the dozens of conferences on mobile technology, networking, IT management, and related topics, and you'll be assaulted with security fears brought on by employee adoption of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. For several years, control issues have been the major IT focus..."

"When a company develops any rule, policy or best practice and communicates it to its employees, putting it into context helps the staff understand why it exists, which makes it easier to respect and observe the policy. So, as a company builds a rule for employees who use their own devices to access company-owned data and information, it should keep in mind that they don't respond well to 'thou shalt' style commandments. A good BYOD policy explains the benefits as they apply to the company and employee..."

"How tough is it to put together relatively spy- or hacker-proof cryptography? The devil is in the details...

With most everyone moving to an encrypted-by-default policy, it makes sense to take a close look at how encryption is put together from end to end. How hard is it to create encryption that's genuinely secure and not just providing the illusion of security?..."

Server security is theoretically vast and intimidating; but in practice tends to be a series of simple common-sense steps that you can take to make your server progressively more secure.

For the novice, it's best not to think of it as 'if I don't do x, y and z, we're all doomed'. Instead, think of the process as 'if I do x, everything will be better, and then I'll look at y as soon as I'm finished'..."

"Two months ago, on Oct. 1, the U.S. government rolled out HealthCare.gov, where citizens could explore new health care options and apply for new health care insurance. While states could set up their own exchanges, this site was the central point in the plan -- and it failed miserably. Delays, disruptions, errors, and complete unreachability dogged the site in the first days -- then stretched into weeks. Hearings were called in Washington. There were demands that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius resign due to what seemed to be an abject failure of a much-ballyhooed and definitely expensive central cog in the new Affordable Care Act health care law, aka Obamacare..."

"Public key infrastructure has given rise to entire sections within the security industry devoted to the upkeep and improvement of every facet involved with PKI technology. Everything from Root Certificate Authorities to X.509 certificates spawned efforts geared toward successfully guarding server infrastructure and the data therein.

This is especially true with Microsoft server infrastructure, considering the roles and services available within the modern Windows Server environment. These services and roles exist specifically for Windows Server PKI deployment -- not the least of which is the Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) role..."

The JavaFX team writes, "The basic NetBeans 7.4 module that allows JavaFX development for iOS is ready and out for your testing. This module is targeted on MacOS environment for now, but with the iPack tool integration it will work also on other platforms - limited only by availability of RoboVM which is used inside this project. It contains two template applications, one traditional HelloWorld and one more complex with a nice animations called GoldenFish.

This module is a result of tight cooperation between our and the NetBeans teams. You can get more details about this module here.

Please bear in mind that this is just basic support. There is still a lot ahead of us!"

"Analysts estimate that two-thirds of organizations' sensitive and regulated data resides in their databases - and the total amount of that sensitive data is growing fast, along with the rest of the digital universe. One analyst claims it will reach 35 zettabytes by 2020.

As a result, security professionals and database administrators need to be asking two fundamental questions.

Where is all of my sensitive data?

Who has access to that data?

As we look forward into 2014, the following trends highlight the importance of data security.

Trend #1: More Organizations Will Know Where Their Sensitive Data Resides

Trend #2: Data Encryption Won't Keep up with Data Growth Rates

Trend #3: Regulations and Other Forms of Compliance Will Continue to Expand